Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Samuel 5

The Philistines took the ark of God. —The sacred writer concerns himself after the battle of Aphek only with the future of the Ark of the Covenant, and says nothing of the fate of Shiloh after the rout of the Israelites and the death of the high priest. We can, however, from Psalm 78:60-64 and two passages in Jeremiah (Jeremiah 7:12; Jeremiah 26:9), complete the story of the sanctuary city after the death of Eli. After the victory of Aphek, the Philistines, flushed with success, probably at once marched on Shiloh, where, from the words of the above quoted Psalm, they seem to have revenged themselves for past injuries by a terrible massacre, and then to have razed the sacred buildings of the city to the ground.

The awful fate of the priestly city seems to have become a proverb in Israel. This house shall be like Shiloh, wrote Jeremiah, hundreds of years later, and this city shall be desolate, without inhabitant. Yet, in spite of this crushing blow, the national life of the Hebrew people was by no means exterminated; we shall soon hear of its revival under happier auspices. There were others in Israel like Samuel, who, as we have seen, with all their hearts trusted in that Lord who, when Israel was a child, then He loved him; others like that weak but still righteous judge Eli, who for one great weakness had paid so awful a penalty; many others, like the wife of Phinehas, the wicked priest, and Elkanah and Hannah, the pious father and mother of Samuel, who dwelt in “Ramah of the Watchers.”

They brought it into the house of Dagon. —The conquerors, we are told, in the meantime, with triumph, carried the captured Ark from the battlefield to Ashdod. This was one of the capital cities of the five Philistine princes. It is built on a hill close to the Mediterranean Sea, and was in later days known as Azotus (Acts 8:40).

In Ashdod they placed it in the temple of the popular Philistine god, Dagon. This was their vengeance for the slaughter of the 3,000 Philistine worshippers in the temple of the same deity at Gaza, not many years before, by the blind Hebrew champion Samson.

The princes and Philistine people well remembered how the blind hero, on that awful day, called on the name of the God of Israel. This was when 3,000 perished in the house of Dagon as he, with his superhuman strength, forced the great temple pillars down. In their idol-trained hearts, they associated this God with the golden Ark.

“This only hope relieves me, that the strife
With me has ended, all the contest now
Between God and Dagon; Dagon has presumed,
Me overthrown, to enter lists with God,
His deity comparing and preferring
Before the God of Abraham. He, be sure,
Will not connive or linger thus provoked,
But will arise, and His great name assert.”—MILTON.

The insulted Dagon and all their murdered countrymen should be avenged by the perpetual humiliation of the “God of Abraham.”

The sacred Ark should from now on be placed at the feet of their god Dagon.

Dagon was fallen upon his face. — This Dagon was one of the chief Philistine deities and had temples not only in Ashdod and Gaza but also in the cities of Philistia. (See St. Jerome on Isaiah 46:1.) The idol had a human head and hands, and the body of a fish. Philo derives the word Dagon from dagan, “corn,” and supposes the worship to have been connected with Nature worship. The true derivation, however, is from Dag, a fish, which represents the sea from which the Philistines drew their wealth and power.

In one of the bas-reliefs discovered at Khorsabad, and which, Layard states, represents the war of an Assyrian king—probably Sargon—with the inhabitants of the coast of Syria, a figure is seen swimming in the sea, with the upper part of the body resembling a bearded man wearing the ordinary conical tiara of royalty, adorned with elephants’ tusks, and the lower part resembling the body of a fish. It has the hand lifted up, as if in astonishment or fear, and is surrounded by fishes, crabs, and other marine animals.

“There can be hardly any doubt,” argues Keil, “that we have here a representation of the Philistine Dagon. This deity was a personification of the generative and vivifying principle of nature, for which the fish, with its innumerable multiplication, was specially adapted, and set forth the idea of the Giver of all earthly good.”

This strange image the men of Ashdod, on the morning after their triumphal offering of the Ark of the Lord before the idol shrine, found prostrate on the temple floor, before the desecrated sacred coffer of the Israelites.

They at once assumed that this had taken place owing to some accident, and they raised again the image to its place.

When they arose early on the morrow. —Strange to say, on the next day a new and startling circumstance aroused and disturbed the exultant Philistines. The idol had fallen again, but this time it was broken. No mere accident could account for what had happened. The head and hands were severed from the image and thrown contemptuously on the threshold of the temple, upon which every priest or worshipper must tread as they passed into the sacred house.

Only the stump of Dagon. —The Hebrew, rendered literally, reads, only Dagon was left to him: that is to say, only “the fish,” the least noble part of the idol image, was left standing; the human head and hands were tossed down for people to trample on as they entered; “only the form of a fish was left in him.”—R. D. Kimchi.

To this day. —This curious “memory” of the disaster to the Dagon image in this Philistine temple at Ashdod long existed among the worshippers of the fish-god. Zephaniah (Zephaniah 1:9), in the reign of King Josiah, mentions this among idolatrous observances which he condemns: In the same day I will punish all those that leap on (or over) the threshold.